


it's just me and you

by cicadas



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 23:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15521310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicadas/pseuds/cicadas
Summary: It’s Wednesday, she thinks. She hasn’t left the apartment and the power is off. The date isn’t the most worrying thing she’s unsure of.It’s Wednesday, and she has Tony Stark in her living room, talking to her with bright red gums and a purple face and his words don’t filter into her ears anymore.Because he’s here, and Peter isn’t.-Alt: Tony tells May about Peter





	it's just me and you

Peter isn’t May’s son.  


She knows this. He especially knows this. Being four years old and told that your parents have gone somewhere, just like their usual trips, Pete, but it’s forever this time, didn’t bode well for the child for a few years. He was smart. He saw through the euphemisms and white lies meant to comfort him. He’d cry each night in anger until May finally told him yes, he was right, they are dead. The names on the paper he found are theirs, you’re right, Peter. And she stopped lying, and she and Ben both agreed to answer any questions he had, even if they were upsetting. He didn't ask many. May believed it was because he already knew. He was too grown up for his age, and it showed when he hit fourteen and began to argue, show just a little of the rage he felt at the lies and the abandonment.

She knows he still blames himself for what happened that night. She knows its the reason he sneaks out at night, and stands up to so many that are bigger than him and comes home with bruises and welts. He’s too good, and it swells inside his body until he feels like he’s going to burst. She gets that. She just wishes Peter knew.

 

It’s Wednesday, she thinks. She hasn’t left the apartment and the power is off. The date isn’t the most worrying thing she’s unsure of.

It’s Wednesday, and she has Tony Stark in her living room, talking to her with bright red gums and a purple face and his words don’t filter into her ears anymore.

Because he’s here, and Peter isn’t.

He’s given her a detailed explanation. Aliens. Spider-Man. That he lied. That Peter lied. That it was his fault. That he’s sorry. That everyone’s gone, and they should have tried harder, and he’s so sorry that it was Peter and not him.

May hears it. She listens. She acknowledges it.

She doesn’t cry.

Her mind flicks to Ben, instead. Of the night the police came around, two of them, a man and a woman who reminded her of her cousin, and how they spoke to her just like she’s being spoken to now. How she didn’t cry until she relayed the news to Peter later that night, and it broke her heart more because Peter didn’t want to listen, because there was blood on his jacket, because he didn’t want to know-

 

“May,” Tony says, as if he’s noticed she’s stopped taking in his words. “I want you to come back to the compound with me. Some of the Avengers are staying there, I’ll be there with you. You’ll be safe. I-”

 

“No.” May says. Because that’s it. She knows what to.

It was only after Ben that Peter started sneaking out. He’d be hiding now. There are so many dead, and the responsibility he feels, the guilt…it’d be killing him, too.

 

“May, I really-”

 

“Tony, thank you for telling me this, but please leave.” He doesn’t move.

May repeats it. Screams it. Pushes at his chest until she feels tears of rage burning at her eyelids, and Tony is finally gone. She shuts the door behind him, collapsing onto the hardwood floor.

Ben would've done the same. Peter would've done the same. She needs to be strong like them, now. Resilient. Angry, like Peter was when they lied about his parents. When she talked to him about Ben. When she herself realised that dead meant gone forever when she was six and her own mother didn't come home for the third week in a row and she cut her hand on the broken glass when she smashed every picture of her in her room. She has the scars on her hand, still. On her wrist, on her arm. She misbehaved, too. She snuck out. She drank underage and forgot all about why she was sad.

Peter is better than her. She raised him to be better. To be good. She can take her own advice, swallow dry spit and live, even if it's just to wait for her nephew.

She won't abandon him, or this house, or these memories. The bunk bed Peter begged her for and never uses, the crack in the bathroom basin she D.I.Y'd with roof sealant, the bunting she and Peter made one easter from card and Sharpie's and never took down because they gave the room some 'pizzazz'.

The cake she pre-bought and stashed in the freezer for his birthday the following weekend.

 

She’ll stay here. She needs to stay here, for Peter.

She’ll be here to comfort him when he’s ready to come home.

 


End file.
